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"He's already free Nate." It's what she has been trying to tell him. That is what she has done, what she was told. And like any soldier…

She got nosey too late. If Waller found out she was questioning this, digging, and on the verge of meddling, there's where the shoe drops.

"That is why we need to go. We need to warn people. Something got set in motion and I don't know what. But I will fix it."

"I'm sorry I never told you. But I can handle it. One thing at a time." Her foot hooks the bench and slides it out from under her as she comes to a stand, zipping up her suit to cover the revelation.

Nate sighs. But then he nods at Rose. "Yes. No. -We- will fix it. Starting by the implants," because Rose becoming non-explosive is the priority now. "I will email Mystique from a library this very morning. But then we will look for a few names in nets. Beginning with Xavier and Summers."

Finding the X-Men is not that hard for someone that is familiar with dimensional counterparts. In fact it should have been easy, but the Red team was not immediately available, so… looking for Xaviers, Summers and Greys in the internet. As well as Xavier Schools, Gifted Children Schools and variants. Well, it is still not lunch time when Nate and Rose arrive to the gates of a school near Salem Center.

Now standing just outside the gates, Nate peers through the railings, looking vaguely uncomfortable. "You know, the buildings are different, but… just the same place where Magneto's X-Men had their hideout back in my world. Three years and two lifetimes ago. Creeps the hell out of me." He draws breath, then projects his consciousness ahead. Most minds are normal. Not what he is looking for. He can't differentiate humans from mutants by their mental signatures like Xavier or Rachel do. He is directly looking for other telepaths, the powerful ones. Xavier… or «Jean!» Contact. "I think Jean is there," he turns to Rose, grinning. He pulls back, because Jean's telepathy is too close in wavelength to his own, weird things can happen. «I am at the gate» he transmits before breaking the telepathic link.

INSIDE:

Jean was just finishing up the paperwork for a student, her brows a deep and troubled frown as she looks it over not once, but twice before shoving it into the manila folder. "Alright dear, I put in the request for Xavier to look at, but he's going to tell you the same thing I'm telling you now. You're not going to be allowed to switch classes because your instructor teaches 'hard things'. You're going to have to try.. to.."

She stops in the middle of her sentence, her head turning slightly to the side as the message comes blaring through the telepathic wavelength. It was close to her own.

"Ms. Grey?" Johnny asks, waving his hand to catch her attention.

"Oh. Sorry. He's going to tell you to try harder. And I believe he's right." Jean speaks as she's standing, moving towards the coat rack to slip on her jacket. "We believe in you. We know you can do this. You wouldn't be put in this class if we didn't think that you wouldn't excel." She was heading towards the door now, opening it so that Johnny could slip through.

"Sleep on it, Johnny. Give it another week. If you're still unsatisfied, we'll hand in the papers together. Just give it a chance."

"Okay.."

The kid walks out of her room as Jean traverses the hallways, moving quick enough to make it to the front door and out onto the front. She spies two figures in the distance, X jacket donned and zipped up to stave off the cold, boots hitting the snow as she takes the short cut (which is straight) towards the gates.

No flying. She was biding her time. Who were these people?

Rose was not a fan of meeting new people, but where they came from Nate had spoken about Jean, and she met Scott. New places, new faces, and this world was similar but not everything was bound to be. The people here could be bad, her dad could be a homemaker, and aliens don't exist… Right? Right.

That single blue eyes slides from Nate to beyind the gate and towards that school, wasnt that the building they got trapped in back on 616 during a dance? Not only no, but hell no.

Movement, it has her reaching back and gripping the handles of her swords that x'd across her back, the duffel hanging over her shoulder bearing everything else from low grade to high grade weaponry, the tac belt concealing the bells and whistles in small pockets save that of throwing knives that are strapped around her thighs.

Rose never did live outside the means of a duffel and suitcase, in case shit like this happens.

Nate looks at Rose mildly amused. "Relax, willya? You seem more worried about meeting new people than about having a bomb implanted in your head." Yeah, relax. He should try to follow his own advice. This is not just 'new people'. Jean is family in a bizarre, convoluted way. But he likes to meet new people, or old people. Or just people.

Jean would see two rather suspicious individuals just outside the gates. Nate seems almost normal, but the outfit he wears, too light for the winter snowstorm ongoing, looks a compromise between normal clothes and a paramilitary uniform, and he has an X in the belt buckle.

And Rose is a woman armored in chainmail and armed with swords. For normal people they are not even there, since Nate is masking his presence telepathically. But for a telepath like Jean, there is no masking. Nate irradiates vast psionic power through the astral planes.

Perhaps there should have been a more guarded method to her approach, instead, she was faithful. The school was at her back and all she needed to do was let loose the dogs of war and the lawn would be flooded with faculty and students alike in defense. But this was a school, they and she were supposed to represent the embodiment of peace in between all mutants. So the weapon walked towards the gates unarmed and with a smile as gentle and false one could muster when approaching two..

He's wearing their insignia.

.. souls.

One hand lifts, no power, but showing that she's calm and the others should be as well. "Easy." She carefully states, green eyes shifting back and forth between Rose and Nate, recognizing that she could possibly be seen speaking to herself. But the world was weird enough where others would see that as no big deal.

"There's no need for weapons. I come to you in peace as you have here. What can we do for you two…" She was waiting for names, but wouldn't outright ask just yet.

"Because in most cities you get killed for knocking on a door more often then death toll of people randomly combusting due to the trigger finger of an Angry Black Woman (tm)." Rose states rather casually, the snow melding witgh the wind whipped lashes of white hair, doing nothing for the fact that she seems as if she is an easily vanishing shadow before this gate.

The black leather outfit bears no insignia, red lining along seams and where additional padding is added, emphasising contours, where scaille maille runs over the vitals. It's obvious she would be ready for said dogs of war even as fingers release the handles of swords and slide hown the pommel in reminder before falling to her sides.

"There's always a need for weapons. Using them or displaying them is where there may be need or not." She can feel Nate's mental projecting, that masking, though she does not know exactly /what/ he is doing. "There's a need, lady. A big fucking need."

Nate gives Rose another amused look. "I am Nate, this is Rose. "We come in peace, seriously." Seriously. He steps aside and grabs the white-haired girl, an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. "We are currently, er… dimensionally-displaced. But this place, this school, Professor Xavier, and you… well, back the other world, they are connected to the X-Men mutant super-hero team."

He raises a hand at the obvious objection, "yes, we know about the Red Team in New York. We couldn't contact with them, and this is somewhat of an emergency. Rose needs immediate surgery because some shady government types put a micro-bomb in her head. And there is a mutant hunter loose, called Caliban, he was freed just last night."

+MEET: Scott Summers has arrived via +meet.

The swearing made her eye twitch. That rapid twitching that stops with a deep inhale and a calming of the self.

Woosa. She was possibly just afraid.

It was unnecessary to ask Rose to disarm herself, she wouldn't let them two in the gate just yet, so there was protection, a metal barrier to keep the potential threat out, even though it usually never stopped them in the first place. Right when she was about to speak, the young man caught her attention, frowning deeply at his words, worry and concern marking her features but yet?

She had her own children to worry about. It was the students. While she could believe him right off the bat, she just had to make sure, stepping close to the gate so that she's within stabbing rage, her gloved hand lifting to beckon Rose forward with a finger curl and an outreaching of a palm.

"While you have a friendly disposition about you, Nate. And I would be so inclined to believe a word of what you say about this young lady here. I need to see for myself."

She explains further. "Don't get me wrong, I want to help you. Mutant hunters are not something I'd like to have out there in the world unchecked with all of the innocents roaming free. But if I'm going to allow you into a home, there are certain things I need to see. To feel." Feeling? Meant the bomb that was in this womans body, if there was one.

Nate's reach, grab and talk has her going tense. A moment of that evidence singing down her spine. "I know, but things change when places do, Nate." From NOWHERE to Stormwatch, to Suicide Squad - a whole new branch and a whole new Stormwatch. She was not keen on forcibly being inserted in teams and it seems to be the trend lately. Once comfotable…

*SNAP!*

Time to readjust… Again. That azure gaze now slides from Nate, to that of Jean as she steps closer, her hand not having to lower to trace fingertips over one of those blades, but she has to learn to trust just as much as the next prson, and this woman was extending a hand. Help or hurt.

No going back, too far gone. Stepping up to the gate she tilts her chin upward, the white fall of hair brushing away from the patch that laid veiled partially beneath. Pride and idignance despite how they came asking for aid. To the extension of her hand she places her own, taking it away from the rest above throwing knives.

"Er… yes?" Nate's eyes narrow at Jean's request. "I got to warn you, our powers will interact in weird ways by reasons that… well, going to be pretty obvious soon. I hope you aren't the kind of woman that freaks out easily." Fair warning given, he also lowers his psychic barriers in the case Jean wants to check his own memories. If she limits herself to Rose's, he will try to keep the girl calm.

Jean didn't really need to hold Rose's hand. She just wanted the woman to draw out of her shell just to start that little path towards trust. Just a little nudge was all that was needed. Her fingers lightly clasp over Rose's as she cuts her eyes towards Nate, just in time for him to lower the barrier, then focuses in upon Rose. "I understand." She says to the man. "And no. I do not freak out easily." Her voice was laced with a measure of calm as she starts to /push/.

But she kept it light, feather light, it could almost feel like there was a bug in Rose's ear.

The world surrounding Jean melts away, leaving only the two women from what Jean sees in a backdrop of pure white. A display of images filter in but remain blurry, that of the past, and of the most recent present where left aside for now.

Micro-bomb. That is all she needed, and she presses that out into the ether, Rose soon displacing to a single bed in a room.

//Doctors soon approach, the woman turned over as procedure.

Scalpel.

Blinking red light.

Wires.

The steady drum of a heart beat..

Hiss of oxygen..

Watchful eyes from above..

Splinter of wood…

Breaking of glass..

"Where are my swords."

A father?

Too deep Jean. Now Caliban.

Mayhem.

A hint of regret..

"He's already free Nate." Rose told him..//

The connection was broken and a step was taken back, her eyes soon aloft with fire as she 'disconnects' from herself and /flies/. It was a quick one. There was always a link there but never tested and prodded. Never pried and jolted, until now.

"SCOTT!" Her voice would ring out if he didn't shut her down long ago. The urgency in that disembodied voice that he may or may not here would be telling. "Come home!"

All depending on that connection, the connection she shares with most, those images that she picked, plucked and lightly tugged from Rose's brain would be projected towards him like a movie on a big screen. What better way to get the point across than to be a bug on someones brain?

A few miles away, underground. Scott Summers is still on leave from his duties as a professor at the Xavier Institute, and ever since his return to Westchester County, he's spent the bulk of his time in that base, pouring over files, reading, planning. The first leg of his mission had gone global before going cold, and now, there were other problems. Problems at home.

He's midway through lifting a mug of coffee when Jean's voice unexpectedly booms into his head. The coffee spills as it goes toward a sleek, stainless steel table, barely missing his hand by the width of a few droplets. The voice is immediately followed by the images.

Knuckles whiten.

Fifteen seconds later, a motorcycle goes bursting from a very well hidden underground bunker-style entrance. Upon it, the rider wears black with blue accents, a red emblazoned X-insignia upon his belt. Snow and ice are kicked up beneath the heavy tires as the bike picks up speed, until the machine barrels down the roadway, growling like a demon set loose from its fiery prison.

The release has Rose's breathing shaky, but not too badly, she was used to this now, between Nate's presence and the ability of Jean it was not hard to go too deep, but once Jean stepped back suddenly even Nate could feel it, those walls slammed firmly into place, training of years locking back into place like when she first came to Stormwatch, in another place entirely.

That gaze snaps to Nate and her head shakes slowly, the duffel having fallen in her grip to her side now hefted back upon her shoulder. "She saw it all.." And part of my /being/ feels like it was just raped. Explain that one. Rose did not have to say it she just looks from Nate to Jean and back. "I don't want to stay too close, it's like you, but a stranger." Yeah… violated.

Nate seems relieved Jean has decided not to check his memories. It means the unavoidable splitting headache has been delayed for some time. Also some revelations that might make everything more complicated. Or maybe simpler. Definitely weirder.

The young man grimaces when he feels Rose's emotions. Now he is feeling /really/ stupid. "Sorry Rose… I should have stepped into your place for this kind of thing." Headache or not. Getting back here must be affecting his head. "Hey," he looks at Jean. "Did you say 'Scott'? Is Scott Summers here?"

As soon as the message was delivered towards Scott, she shuts herself down and off immediately. She did not need to feel Rose's emotions to know that it wasn't a good thing, but it was a first step of many to the road to trust. "It won't happen again." Jean assures her, and for a moment, she almost felt sorry for Rose. But being inside her head let her know that this one is a strong one, sorry is saved for the weak.

The glow within her eyes die down as she gives a slight nod of her head towards Nate. "Perhaps I was a bit loud. But Mr. Summers is on his way." Politeness in the face of urgency, for she waves her hand for them to step aside as the buttons were pushed upon the console to allow them to open wide, arms welcoming.

"We have to move fast as soon as Mr. Summers arrives." She didn't want to see what she felt when she was connected to the young woman, that would have made things worse. "School is still in session and everyone is busy. No one should be in the medical bay at this point in time."

The sound of a motorcycle can be heard approaching in the distance. With the blizzard barreling along the coast, it's doubtful that the rider came from very far away. Then again, in the world of mutants and metahumans, it's hard to tell.

What exists beneath the Xavier Institute is a far cry from the underground X-Men Base, which lies a few miles away. The old X-Men base was abandoned well over a decade ago, when it became clear to Professor Xavier that the dangers of an evolving world warranted that the X-Men operate out of their own facility. Now, the old base beneath the school serves mostly as a 'bomb shelter'.

Which… is ironic.

The motorcycle is flying down the road, easily pushing the envelope beyond 100 mph. Snow and ice continue to twirl up in its wake, the rider clearly well trained at handling such high speeds in dangerous road conditions. As the figure grows closer in the snowy distance, the visor built into his uniform may serve as a tell tale sign.

"She said she wanted to feel the truth and you seemed fine…" Rose replied to Nate, so… She took one for the team, and did't like it. That's normal.

"Stop apolgizing, the both of you…" Her gaze snaps between and then pauses to hold on to Jean as that gate spreads wide to let them in, that snow kicking up and swirling around them just liek it did around the break-neck approaching Scott. Oh now, that she would duly challenge, her own motorcycle parked at the base of the long drive and hidden, just in case the scent alone drew trackers. Rose only has a small idea of what she let loose upon the cities. But she /knows/ discretion and cautions when truly necessary.

Looking up at the sound of the approach her duffel is dropped, both hands going back once more to grab the swords and draw them. A twist of wrists and they set at her sides, lightly tilted outward in ease and yet readiness. "Is this Scott?" Rose is jumpy, rightfully so, and if Jean saw what she did, there's reasons she doesn't trust easily. "Medbay for what?" Her eye now dances between them, never straying from the approach.

Nate nods thoughtful. He can sense Scott's mind approaching, and a motorcycle. The layout of the school is unfamiliar, but some details stand. "Yes. Medbay." Of course Rose and labs do not get along. But this is the reason they came here! "Because you have bomb implants that we want out of your body," he reminds her. "I can't do that, you need a real surgeon. But I will be there."

He follows the women inside, taking a final long look at the road behind them. The storm had most roads empty of vehicles, but it was just annoying to Rose and him. He is quite sure no one followed them, and no normal human could. But checking once again can't hurt, right?

Jean held the young womans gaze, her poker face in full effect as she glances off into the distance. Scott was coming. And fast. And just to be sure? She keeps her powers at the ready in case the bike were to skip and flip. And then there was Rose. And the slight press of her telekinetics to hold the blades in place, just in /case/. You never know how fast someone is until you blink. And if Rose was fast? How could she.. or anyone defend against.

She keeps that hold upon her blades light yet tight, the path towards the school met with ease and doors left open for Scott to follow behind. She made sure that no one could see the two, coupled with Nate's on gift, yet allowing the sight of what she could see to filter through to Scott if necessary.

All of this is wordless of course, until a snap of her fingers is given towards Nate. "Tone it down."

You don't want X to come doing wheelies down the hallway in anger, now do we?

At a very precise moment, the motorcycle's throttle is released. Gradually, the bike reduces speed until it rides like a normal machine, for Scott doesn't want to startle any of the students. By the time he's parked and dismounted, Jean and the others have already made their way inside. Plus, he's in uniform.

Been spending a lot more time in uniform, lately. It seems that Scott ends up in more troublesome positions than otherwise.

The X-Man goes jogging off into the yard, searching for the old, hidden entrance to the underground shelter. It's finally revealed by the turn of a few old pines and the exposure of a small door, emblazoned with the X-insignia. Moments later, Cyclops is inside the underground shelter and waiting for everyone else's arrival with arms crossed over his chest.

Medbay, inside, remove… That brow not hidden bhind a patch is rising as she steps to the threshold and stops, her sword feeling heavier then normal and she is looking at her hands now, shaking around the hilts. "Why are you already restraining me??"

At first her voice is low, almost an inaudible whisper. Nate may know them and trust them, but even back /home/ she did not trust the android they resided with, nor her medical procedures, but its in her past, it's what /they/ did to people.

It was like slow motion, her hands released those swords.

"Why are you restraining me?!?" Now she was louder. Indeed they may be masked, they may be hidden, she can feel that power hum around her and pile it all together, and before those sword hit the ground there is a moment of apology in her glance towards Nate.

«Monitors beep, bodies rest in stasis tubes, wired feeding in and out of their spines, tubes networked like veins, their eyes wide open and milky with imagery being fed there all the while she can watch on screens… Heart monitors flatline… "They're no good. Kill them."»

He trust so easily. Her lack of trust is shown in the throwing blades she draws instead, spinning to see no Scott behind in the stretch of open yard and her panic flooded just a bit higher. Twisting to the side in a way that replicates a brong loaded compound reaction to pressure, one hand snapping outward and that dagger shooting outward towards Jean.

Nate is too trusting? Well, he is a telepath, he is very difficult to deceive. But it is true he tends to trust Jean quite a bit, and this is not the Jean he knows. Restraining what? He stops and looks at Rose, surprised and wary. "What is going on?"

And then Rose freaks out. This comes as a surprise, because he is used to her toughening up no matter how bad is the situation. Traumatic flashbacks happen to other people (occasionally to him). "Rose!" He tackles the girl, hopefully in time to prevent the knife from hitting Jean.

"To protect him." Which him? It was up for debate, most of them didn't need protecting. She still remained calm, even as the girl began to flip out, her gaze falling upon Scott as the door to the medbay was open, a slight smile drawing upon her lips and turn.

The dagger was flying towards her, her shields immediately drawing up with a hand and a curl of her fingers to stop it just within a breath of it making it's mark.

Those eyes of hers do not narrow, there was no hint of anger, only a tiny bit of sadness her fingers slowly curl to press against her lips to tap, dagger still held in middair.

"Shh."

It was a pulse. One that was felt within the room for the briefest of moments; a pulse aimed at the young woman, precisely towards her neuro cortex to shut her /down/ and into a deepest of sleeps. At times she never really liked doing that to most, she was able to calm and console with just a hug and wise words through tutelage. But the situation was dire, too dire. She invited napalm into the fire.

So consumed with duty and the need to set things right. Scott nearly misses the smile, simply because he's far too focused on the task at hand. He does notice it, however, and it's enough to slow him down.

His finger hovers near palm, but it never makes contact. Not when the knife is halted in midair. He'd have led the knife and hit Jean instead.

Lips peel back into a grimace, but the moment Rose begins to fall, Scott is there to collect her into his arms.